Buying Followers, Likes, And Comments

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been seeing a ton of people posting about a new wave of influencers and social media creators that are buying their followers and also their engagement (likes, comments, etc.) on instagram. You may have also seen tons of instagram influencers and celebrities promoting “giveaways” and creating these loops on instagram to gain followers.

I’m going to address the whole “buying” followers thing first, simply because I think it’s one of the most painful things to watch as a creator who has been on the instagram platform for nearly 8 years. I started instagram as a way to document my lifestyle and it was my outlet to genuinely express myself and my thoughts. Over the years, it has become not only a great outlet to connect with millions of people from all over the world, but it has also become a full-time business and job for thousands of people including myself.

For the last 8 years, I have invested my entire life into producing content, interacting with my followers, marketing myself, shooting new projects, working with brands, building business relationships, and most importantly, turning my brand into a full-time career that has allowed me to do what I do. To see other people who just started their brands trying to cheat their way through the system is not only disheartening, but it’s also dishonest and morally just wrong. I don’t think anyone who buys their followers could be proud of something like that. That’s not hard work and dedication day in and day out – that’s just laziness and ultimately, a short-term plan that will get them nowhere in the long-term.

There’s no feeling of great success and achievement that comes with faking your audience. I wake up everyday with a feeling of such gratitude and pride to have come so far and to have been so patient through the process of so many years. While I believe that brands are becoming much smarter and educated when it comes to marketing using influencers, there are still a lot of brands that are learning how to work with influencers on instagram and many of them are scouting out influencers that have fake followers, likes, and comments. This ultimately will lead to a zero return on investment for those brands, which loses them hundreds or thousands of dollars. It’s downright scamming people if you are buying your engagement and then charging brands money to promote their products.

The other scam I would like to address are the current giveaway loops happening on instagram. When I initially saw them happening, I thought “what a cool idea – a great way to give back to my followers, and also expand my audience”. It turns out that this “cool idea” is actually just another way of essentially scamming people to follow you, and really has nothing to do with giving gifts to them. I made the mistake of joining a few of these a while ago, and I will never participate again. Sure, there may be a winner who receives some awesome prizes, but the truth is, in the long-run this is extremely damaging to your brand. People are smarter now and know that for the most part, these things are tricks to boost engagement, growth, and much less about the benefit of the audience. If you’ve participated in the giveaway loops before, you’ll notice that 50% the people who followed you will unfollow you because they didn’t win – and chances are, they won’t participate in the next one. Things I also noticed after participating in a few giveaways and experiencing this firsthand, is that my followers would get greatly discouraged and many of them would lose interest in me and my content. They also would find it as a great reason to unfollow my page because I was disrupting my professional content with tacky, unattractive “GIVEAWAY” images. For about a month after I stopped doing these giveaway loops, my engagement had cut in half and I had lost the value of my brand in not only my eyes, but in many of my followers eyes too.

One thing that HAS seemed to work in my favor is to just be genuine and stop caring so much about growing your brand, and start putting more into the people that already do follow you. Investing in my content daily, focusing on interacting with my audience daily, replying to comments and direct messages, liking and commenting on my follower’s own instagram pages just to put a smile on their faces…THOSE are the steps you can take to ensure you will grow your brand into something that’s long-term. If your content is superb and you’re a good, hard-working person, you will grow your brand, I can guarantee you that. You can NOT fake the grind. There are no “shortcuts” to real success. Remember that.

3 Comments

THIS is so real. So glad someone’s finally said it. I’ve unfollowed so many bloggers because of their giveaway images. I just started my blog and I refuse to care about engagement. Mainly because I still have a full time job in my actual uni major. But also it’s just for fun. I miss the days when blogs and YouTube videos were done for fun and inspiration not ads and follower engagement.

Hi! Thanks for writing about this and sharing your thoughts on it because I seriously had no idea people *actually* paid for followers/likes. I recently starting seeing people posting about that too and it’s crazy that people would spend their money on it because like you said, it’s so dishonest and I would much rather save money or spend it on travel, etc. One of my favorite things is meeting new friends on Instagram and feeling like we inspire each other. And it’s definitely hard work.

First of all I love how creative you are, love following you! I have to say though that 8 years ago Instagram didn’t have this crazy algorithms that they do today. It was a simple platform that became extremely hard to “expand” your own page or even to discover new creators, you even addressed this on your stories already. Besides those algorithms being right or wrong, it’s good that you bring up the “buying new followers” that is 100% cheating and dishonest. I don’t think I agree with the giveaway loops because the person is entitled to unfollow and if they don’t like the page or if they were there just for the prize they will unfollow. What’s cool is the exciting prize someone in need will recive. I’ve done 1 giveaway loop and I “met” awesome followers that I talk and engage almost everyday. I also came across to great pages like yours. Today I keep seeing the same people and same things over and over again on my Instagram page with this algorithm. I barely see you on my page now! Now, if it took you 8 years with all the creative and knwoley you have, it will be almost never to someone that is fairly new to the Instagram world ( like me and like many) due to all the algorithms social media has implemented. No I’m not saying you got this far because there were no such things before. I hope you following what I’m saying. Keep on being awesome girl.